


we were stars (we will be galaxies, one day)

by eurydicees



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (not in all of the stories), Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, One Shot Collection, Post-Canon, Stucky Bingo 2020, Wakanda (Marvel), World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29064663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydicees/pseuds/eurydicees
Summary: Collection of one shots for Stucky Bingo 2020. Summaries, tags, warnings, and word counts are in the notes.1. Bucky has a man bun, Steve has a beard, but, somehow, nothing has changed.2. In war times, Steve's forgiveness is all that Bucky needs.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2020





	1. even our faces have changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Square C5: Man Bun  
> Characters: Steve, Bucky, Shuri  
> Warnings: None  
> Tags: post-canon, canon compliant, Wakanda, fluff, reunions  
> Word Count: 1,283

It’s always hot in Wakanda— the sun beats down with a kind of fury that Brooklyn doesn’t know, the wind wanders over the plains with warm breaths, the ground itself burns and dries out, parched for lack of rain, the heat fills you up like you’re drowning in it— and Bucky loves it. 

He relishes in the heat, sitting out by the lake for hours and hours, just letting the sun fall onto his shoulders and wrap him up, burning the skin on his face into a light pink color. He lets the heat of Wakanda set him on fire, and at high noon, he almost forgets what it's like to be cold. He almost forgets what it’s like to lay back and slip into the darkness of cryofreeze, losing years and decades as they run by in a carousel of cold winters. 

He doesn’t fully forget, of course, because those memories are just as ingrained in his subconscious as the trigger words had been. He’s never going to be completely free of them. That’s something he tells his therapist every session, and he always reminds Bucky that just because the memories are there, doesn’t mean he can’t move on. 

While he sits by the lake on the dry ground and lets himself get sunburnt, he’s moving on. Every time that Bucky gets set on fire, the part of him that froze melts away just a little bit more. The scars are still cold and white, but the sun turns the rest of his mind warm. 

There are drawbacks, though, Bucky finds. The sunburns itch when they settle into his skin, and the skin peels off when he rubs a towel over his arms. Apparently even a super soldier serum won’t stop him from the UV rays he heard about in the science class he sits in on every Monday and Tuesday at 3:00PM. 

But even worse is how hot his hair gets when he sits in the sun for too long. It covers the back of his neck and sticks to the sweat behind his ears, the dark brown heating up until it’s uncomfortable to touch. He loves sitting in the sun, but if he doesn’t drink enough water, he starts getting a headache and the phantom pains at his arm start to sting and needle at him just a bit more. 

Bucky’s solution, much to the chagrin of Shuri, is what she calls a man bun and what she thoroughly disapproves of. 

“White people,” she says, “are not meant to have hair like that. Your hair is too thin and the bun just falls over. It’s _limp,_ Bucky. People with square faces shouldn’t even attempt it.” 

“I don’t have a square face,” Bucky tells her, but she doesn’t seem to care much for that argument. 

“Don’t lie to yourself,” she says, and then rolls her eyes and changes the topic. 

But it’s a long walk from his little hut to Shuri’s labs, and the sweat always ends up dripping from the back of his neck down to his shoulder blades, and that’s anything but comfortable. If he ties his hair up, dark strands won’t stick to his back and itch when he moves, and that’s a win in his eyes. So he doesn’t stop wearing it whenever he visits her. 

He doesn’t mind her teasing. If anything, it reminds him of the sisters he barely remembers, and the way they used to push him around and make fun of him when he read the medical journals he bought for 50 cents down at the corner store. It’s nice to have someone willing to tease him rather than be afraid of him. Besides, now he’s mostly doing it to antagonize her. 

It’s not until Steve comes to visit that Bucky starts doubting his decision. 

Steve always visits without warning, which Bucky has come to begrudgingly accept, since his new life as the vigilante version of Captain America apparently makes it difficult to send messages about locations and plans. It’s annoying, because Bucky likes plans and order and Steve likes none of those things unless it's on a battlefield, but there’s not much Bucky can do about it unless he wants someone finding out where Steve is hiding at any given moment. 

So Steve visits, and Bucky is not prepared. He’s not dressed in anything he’d like Steve to see him in, because Bucky has unashamedly arranged outfits that specifically cover his arm and match his eyes because good God, all he wants is for Steve to think he’s handsome, and it’s been too long since he washed his hair. Instead of bathing, Bucky has just tied his hair up into one of Shuri’s hated man buns and called it a day. 

The strands of hair are still matted and greasy, and Bucky tries not to run his hands through it and make it any more greasy while he stands by his hut and watches Steve come down the hill. Steve hasn’t seen him in months, and Bucky’s hair has grown long, too long, reaching past his shoulders and down to his chest in unruly waves, and he’s not sure how Steve would react to it. The Bucky that Steve knew and loved wouldn’t have been caught dead with long hair. 

But despite that, Steve hasn’t seemed to notice the grease at Bucky’s hairline or the holes in his clothes or the thick bun at the back of his head, and he’s running. He’s running down the hill as if he can’t wait to reach the bottom, as if reaching Bucky there is his only goal in life, as if there’s nothing else motivating him to run. 

He doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but in the seconds it takes for Steve to reach him, Bucky is grinning. Smiles like that are unusual for him, but oh, he loves the feeling of it. 

Steve stops just before he crashes into Bucky, and he’s smiling just as wide. Nervously, as if he doesn’t know what to expect now that’s there, but happy all the same. Bucky doesn’t really know what to say, and neither does Steve, but they’re looking at each other for the first time in months and Steve is more beautiful than Bucky remembers. 

“You grew a beard,” Bucky says, nearly choking on the words. It was probably the dumbest thing he could have said, because now Steve was rolling his eyes, and that was definitely not Bucky’s intention.

“You have a man bun,” Steve says, “you can’t talk.” 

Bucky’s face splits into a wider grin. “I like my man bun.” 

“It’s terrible.” 

“You’re just jealous,” Bucky tells him, and then he opens his arms for a hug, and Steve falls into him. 

Steve holds on tightly, his arms around Bucky’s neck, face buried in his shoulder. He’s shaking slightly from laughter, and Bucky feels warmer than the sun has ever made him feel. He clutches his hands around Steve’s waist, sinking into the feeling of being held, his face pressed in the hollow space where his shoulder and his neck meet. Bucky can smell that soap he used last, the slightest hint of strawberry, and he can feel Steve’s pulse drumming just under his skin, and he wonders why he didn’t do this first. 

When Steve finally pulls back, he leaves his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, some kind of electric touch running through his fingers and under Bucky’s skin. 

“It’s really good to see you, Buck,” Steve says quietly, his voice low in that way that makes Bucky’s stomach twist. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you too,” Bucky says. He’s never been more honest about something in his life.


	2. that burning in your eyes and this burning in my hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Square A1: 1940s  
> Characters: Steve, Bucky  
> Warnings: mentions of suicide and suicidal thoughts, internalized homophobia, swearing  
> Tags: during canon, canon compliant, religious themes, possibly unrequited love, world war ii  
> Word Count: 1,615  
> Notes: i didn't really bother to check the actual years, but i DID pull canon dialogue so that makes up for it

The difference between before and after, Bucky thinks, is Steve. It seems like his whole world revolves around that— the turning point in which he met Steve. It seems like his whole world revolves around the desperate need to be with Steve all of the fuckin’ time. It seems like his whole world revolves around that turning point; the moment he met Steve is the sun, a gravitational point in which Bucky is drawn back to again and again. 

If Bucky is the stars, then Steve is the heavens. If Bucky is the split cuts at his knees, then Steve is the sutures at his skin. If Bucky is broken, then Steve is the medicine Bucky chokes on every time. 

There’s nothing more beautiful, Bucky thinks, than the kind of pain which comes from loving Steve. 

It’s a hopeless kind of pain— the kind of pain which pulses under Bucky’s skin, which beats at his heart every moment of every day. He doesn’t think that he could have ever lived in a world without Steve Rogers. There’s _before,_ when he hadn’t had Steve, and there’s _after,_ when Bucky cannot let go of him. 

Steve doesn’t feel the same way, he never has and he never will. Bucky knows that much. There are very few truths that Bucky is sure of, but this is one of them. Steve might love him as a friend, might enjoy his company, but it’ll never be anything more than that. Bucky might crave that something more like he has never wanted anything else, but that doesn’t mean Steve wants it too. That doesn’t mean Bucky will ever have it.

There are things in this world, Bucky thinks, that you can love with your mind but cannot hold in your hands. There are feelings that you have hidden in your body but cannot keep. Steve is one of those things— those feelings that Bucky has for Steve are feelings that he can keep in his heart and cannot ever let go of. 

The year is 1943 and Bucky has not let go. He has gone to hell, but he has not let go. He is stuck in the stink and the wretchedness of the war, the shit and blood and dirt of death, but he’s holding onto Steve. He’s holding onto Steve’s heart, gripping it tightly in his hands— the most precious thing that he can never own. Steve is a thousand miles away, still in Brooklyn, and Bucky is holding onto that fact harder than he has ever gripped anything before. 

When he sleeps at night, he dreams of Steve. He dreams of Brooklyn. He wakes up crying. 

The other men can’t even make fun of him for it, because Bucky is as familiar with their nightmares as he is with his own. This is war, and there is nothing beautiful or poetic about it. There is only death, and the darkness that comes with it. There is only the innocence which is shadowed and cracked and put to ash like a cigarette stub pressed to skin.

Bucky holds onto dreams of Steve in Brooklyn as tight as he can. When the war ends, he will come back home to Steve. When the world ends, he will find Steve, and he will hold his hand. When the universe ends, they will kiss and the universe will stitch itself back together again.

In his dreams, the stars do not go out. When he wakes, the smoke and smog of war covers the heavens. When he lies with his eyes wide open and turned to the sky, the dried mud cracking on his lips, he sees no constellations. He sees only the smoke and dust of the bombs which killed his men— his friends. 

He clings onto his dreams— Brooklyn and Steve and _home, home, home—_ and begs God that he will make it out of this war. But he alternates his prayers. On Sundays, he begs to come home, to see Steve again, to be okay. Other days, he begs for death. He begs to let go, for the universe to give up on him. He begs God to let him disappear. Maybe it’s the cowards way out— that’s what the priest said when George Barnes put a gun to his chin and pulled the trigger with his pointer finger— but Bucky begs to die in his sleep. 

When he dies, Bucky knows that he will not go to heaven. Nothing he has done can be forgiven. Whether it’s the men he’s killed or the boys he’s wanted to kiss, Bucky cannot be forgiven. He has committed too many sins that he hasn’t apologized for. Maybe he’ll never apologize for them. 

He has this recurring dream where Steve dies, blown up in the minefield that rests silently only a dozen miles away. Steve— all 90 pounds and bright smiles and bloody fists and bruised knees— walks straight through No Man’s Land and then flies up and falls apart fifty feet up. His scream, even in Bucky’s dreams, is haunting. Not haunting like some kind of phantom touch, but as a kind of waking nightmare. As a kind of broken mirror and seven years of bad luck. 

The problem with loving Steve is that Bucky has both something to live and die for, and everything to lose. It’s quite the conundrum, he thinks. He wants to die in this war, but he still has something to fight for. Steve fucking Rogers. Bucky might be damned, but Steve isn’t.

The day after Bucky is chosen from the pits of workers and dragged to the experiment room, Bucky thinks he’s going to die. He’s had that thought, that dream, a thousand times before— he’s been at war long enough that he thinks he’s going to die every day. But this is different, this is a kind of death that Bucky hadn’t prepared for. He knows the protocol for torture, he knows the theory of suffering, but going through it it is different. 

He wonders, if he dies here, if Steve will forgive him or not. Forgive him for dying. Forgive him for killing. Forgive him for loving. Forgive him for looking up at the stars and seeing only bombs. Forgive him for looking up at the ceiling and seeing only Steve’s eyes. Seeing ghosts. 

“Bucky,” Steve’s ghost whispers. “Oh my God.” 

Bucky brings himself to smile, eyes closed. He doesn’t know if his lips are actually smiling, or if the neurons in his brain are just incomprehensible. “Is that…” 

“It’s me,” the ghost murmurs. His voice is strong, familiar. When Bucky opens his eyes, it’s not Steve. But that’s his voice, that’s his face, that’s his mouth. “It’s Steve.” 

“Steve?” Bucky asks, his eyes fluttering. 

Steve swallows, his hands going to Bucky’s wrists, to his shoulders, to his cheeks. “I thought you were dead.” 

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky murmurs. 

The ghost is too big to be Steve, too strong. But then again, Steve has always been strong. Maybe this war has brought his body up to the same size as his heart. That stupid fucking valiant heart, brave and true and storming into hell without hesitation. Without fear. That’s Steve, that’s his heart, even if it’s not his body. And it’s that stupid heart that Bucky fell in love with. 

“Come on,” Steve insists, pulling Bucky up, dragging him forwards, dragging him up and out. Steve has always been the one pulling Bucky forward. Saving him. In every way. 

“What happened to you?” Bucky asks, stumbling behind him. 

Steve doesn’t look at him, just keeps marching forward. He’s never been more soldier-like, and it terrifies Bucky in a way that he can’t explain. “I joined the Army.” 

“Did it hurt?” 

“A little.” 

Bucky swallows, thinking of Steve strapped to a table, poison injected into his veins, pushing through his arms and making him scream, knives digging into flesh, doctors telling him to be quiet while they make him alien, something stronger and angrier and weaponized. Bucky heard the whispers, and if Steve had heard any similar whispers— which he must have, if he’s storming Hydra bases— it had hurt. 

“Is it permanent?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t know if he’s asking for Steve or for himself. 

“So far.” 

Bucky goes quiet at that; and they run. They run in the same way they had run down the Brooklyn streets as children, then as teenagers, then as adults who didn’t know what adulthood meant, chests heaving and asthma acting up. They run in the same way that they had run across the city, chasing each other, or chasing freedom, or chasing breath. They run like nothing has ever changed. 

But the year is 1943 and everything has changed. 

Steve reaches back, grabbing Bucky’s hands and pulling him forward. His hand is sweaty, the war bloodying Bucky’s fingers. But Steve holds on anyways. 

There is _before_ Steve, and _after_ Steve. 

There is _before_ the war, and _during_ the war, and Bucky is confident that there will be an _after_ the war. And he and Steve are still running. Still holding tight to each other. Bucky gravitates around Steve’s hand, the pulse of Steve’s heart in his grip. Bucky has never been more undeserving, and has never felt more loved. Steve came for him. If that— walking through hell, forgiving the crime of living through war— isn’t love, Bucky doesn’t know what is. There is nothing worse he could do, and it’s nothing more than Steve will forgive him for. 

When Steve glances back at him, Bucky’s hands burn clean.


End file.
